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Use the app bar Win 8 apps aim to be simpler than old-style Win applets, which means it's goodbye to menus, complex toolbars & many interface standards. There will commonly be a few options open on the App bar, though, so if you're unsure what to do then either right-click an empty part of the screen, press Win+Z or flick your finger up from the bottom of the screen to take a closer look. 9. Launch apps from the desktop Win 8 doesn't provide any obvious way to launch apps straight from the desktop, but this is surprisingly easy to set up. Right-click on an empty part of your desktop, select New > Shortcut, & type Explorer Shell:AppsFolder in the "Location" box. Click Next, enter a name - "All Apps", for instance - & click Finish. Double-clicking that shortcut will open a folder listing all your installed apps, including the apps, & you can launch you like. 10. See what's running If you launch a Win 8 app, play with it for a while, then press the Win key you'll switch back to the Start screen. Your app will remaining running, but as there's no taskbar then you may be wondering how you'd ever find that out. You could just press Alt+Tab, which shows you what's running just as it always has. Holding down the Win key & pressing Tab displays a pane on the left-hand side of the screen with your running apps. (To see this with the mouse, move your cursor to the top left corner of the screen, wait until the thumbnail of 1 app appears, then drag down.) & you can always press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to see all your running apps in the Task Manager, if you don't mind (or need) the extra tech param. 11. Close an app Buying Guide20 finest laptops in the world Win 8 apps don't have close buttons, but this isn't the pain you may think. Apps are suspended when you switch to something else so they're only a minimal drain on your system, & if you need the system capital then they'll auto be shut down. (Their context will be saved, , so on relaunching they'll carry on where you left off.) If you want to close down an app anyway, though, move the mouse cursor up to the top of the screen. When it turns from the regular mouse pointer to the icon of a hand, hold down the left mouse button & drag it down the screen. Your app should shrink to a thumbnail which you can drag off the screen to close it. If that's too much hassle, then simply pressing Alt+F4 still works. & when all else burn then press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager, right-click something in the Apps list & select End Task. Beware, though, close something you shouldn't & it's easy to crash or lock up your PC. 12. Hide the taskbar If you run Win 8 on a tablet then it makes sense to keep your taskbar on the left, where it takes minimal space & is finest placed for easy thumb access. Switch your tablet to portrait orientation, though, & you'll suddenly find the taskbar grabs much more valuable screen real estate. It doesn't have to be this way, - not if you install Surface Taskbar Helper. This neat tool enables you to set the taskbar to "auto hide" based on its current orientation, so for instance you can always show it in landscape view, but hide it in portrait, which is a flexible way to get the most out of your display space. 13. Master Web Explorer in Win 8 Click the Web Explorer tile from the Start menu & you'll launch a full-screen version without toolbars, menus or sidebars, which like so much of Win 8 may leave you initially feeling lost. Right-click an empty part of the page or flick your finger down from the top of the screen, though, & you'll find options to make & switch between tabs, as well as a Refresh button, a 'Find' tool & the ability to pin an Web shortcut to the Start page. Click the spanner icon & select 'View on the desktop' to open the full desktop version of Web Explorer. 14. Spell check Win 8 apps all have spellcheck where relevant, which looks & works much as it does in Pc Office. Make a mistake & a wavy red line will appear below the offending word; tap or right-click this to see suggested option words, or add the word to your own dictionary if you like. 15. Run 2 apps side by side Modern UI apps are what Pc calls 'immersive' apps, which means they run full-screen - but there's ways to view up to four at once. On Win 8, swipe from the left & the last app you were using will turn into a thumbnail; drop this, & 1 app displays in a sidebar pane while your current app takes the rest of the screen. & you can then swap these by swiping again. Win 8.1 expands on this & can display up to four apps simultaneously, if you've enough screen space. Move your mouse cursor to the top of the screen, & when it changes to a hand icon, drag & drop your app to the left or right. Once you've moved it enough, a dividing line will appear, you can drop the app, & it'll appear in just that part of the screen. Use the bar between your apps to resize their window widths, or if you need to make 1 full-screen again. 16. Run as Administrator Some apps need you to run them with Administrator rights before they'll work properly. The old context menu isn't open for a pinned Start screen app, but right-click 1, & if it's better for this app then you'll see a Run As Administrator option. 17. Make a large app tile smaller You'll notice that Win 8 apps come in discrete tile sizes, & these won't always be set up as you like (if you're not interested in Sports, say, you may like that tile to be small). In Win 8, right-clicking a tile displays 'Smaller' or 'Larger' options which you can use to resize it. Or in Win 8.1, right-click a tile, 'Resize' & choose from 1 of four tile sizes: 'Large', 'Wide', 'Medium' & 'Small'. 18. Uninstall easily If you want to hide an unused app for now, select 'Unpin from Start'. The tile will disappear, but if you change your mind then you can always add it again later. (Search for the app, right-click it, select 'Pin to Start'.) &, if you're sure you'll never want to use an app again, choose 'Uninstall' will remove it entirely. , if you like to try out lots of apps then uninstalling them 1 at a time can get a lil tedious. If that becomes a problem, give Win App Boss a try - it enables you to select multiple apps & remove them all at once. 19. Customise app privacy It'S worth keeping in mind that by default Win 8 apps can use your name, location & account image. If you're not happy with that, it's easily changed. Press Win+I, click More PC Settings, select Privacy & click the relevant buttons to disable any param you'd rather not share. The new Task Manager includes a History feature that tracks the CPU time used by every app. If you're wondering what someone's doing most of the time on their Win 8 system, launching Task Manager (press Ctrl+Shift+Esc) & clicking the App History tab will give you an idea. But if you don't want someone doing the same to you, clicking App History > Burn Usage History will clear all the figures. 20. Show office tools Experienced Win users who expend much of their time in 1 advanced applet or another are often a lil annoyed to see their favourite tools buried by Win 8. Pc has paid at least some attention, though, & there's ways to bring some of them back. As we've talked about, pressing Win+X launches a menu with plenty of tech tools: 'Device Manager', 'Network Connections', 'Computer Management' & more. If you need more power, open the Charm bar by flicking your finger from the right-hand side of the screen & select 'Settings' then 'Tiles'. Change 'Show office tools' to 'Yes' & click back on an empty part of the Start screen. & it's as simple as that. Scroll to the right & you'll find a host of new tiles for discrete key applets - Performance Monitor, Instance Viewer, Task Scheduler, Capital Monitor & more - ready to be accessed at a click.